Jetrader - Summer 2017 - 25

With so much growth happening
in Asia, are we reaching a
tipping point?
The market certainly feels top heavy
right now, and when you see things like
large companies having layoffs and cutbacks, those are the signs that you're topping out. But, every four to 10 years, for
as long as aviation has existed, there has
been a cyclic downturn. The question is
how pronounced will that downturn be?
But airlines are incredibly resilient. They
operated for decades in conditions that
didn't allow them to be profitable, and
they can manage their businesses in a
manner where they can continue profitability. That is perhaps the reason why
we might not have a pronounced downturn. There will be companies that come
and go. There will be major transactions
that fail. There will be bank deals that
go bad. But overall, if you look at, especially the state of the bigger carriers in
the Americas and Europe and in Asia,
they're profitable.
In Asia, the market is growing at
unparalleled levels. Does that mean

that manufacturers are making the right
amount of airplanes for the right amount of
demand? Right now, they're selling everything that they're making, so they must be
on track. They are meeting the demands of
the market with no whitetails in the desert.
All of the things that have caused downturns in the past have happened in the last
30 months - terrorism, currency issues,
recessions, disease - yet the market has
stayed resilient. People have a desire to
fly. They have accepted those things as
speedbumps in the road. Plus, these concerns are generally regional, so if you have
a currency issue in Brazil, it doesn't bring
the whole market down.

Looking a little further west,
ISTAT will be holding its
annual European conference
(ISTAT EMEA) in September.
Ahead of that event, what
specific industry challenges
do you see facing this region?
My biggest concern is whether Brexit
caused other countries to think about
potentially exiting the European Union - if

countries like France and Germany think
about leaving, for example.
The unraveling of the EU could cause
major distress and could be a driver of
a global recession. How do you measure
what would happen if France and Germany
exited? What would that do to the smaller
nations that are part of the EU? What would
happen to their economies? Would that
cause Europe to go into a decade-long
recession? That is possible.

How long have you been
a part of ISTAT?
I think I joined in '92 or '94. In those
early days, the manufacturers sent one person, if that, to ISTAT. Now, when you go to
an ISTAT conference, instead of there being
a few hundred, there are a few thousand.
And that includes everybody who operates up and down the food chain of an
aircraft lifecycle.
It has become an incredibly powerful
organization that advocates for the growth
of our industry, and that is a pretty powerful statement for something that started
with just a few people.

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Jetrader - Summer 2017

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